I realized my kids laugh hardest when I stop pretending to be the responsible adult and just follow the weird impulse that hits my brain first.

Not the planned activities. Not the carefully structured “quality time.” The spontaneous, slightly chaotic moments when my neurodivergent brain takes over and we end up doing something that makes no practical sense but feels completely right. Those are the moments they talk about later. Those are the moments they want more of.

For years, I treated that wiring like a liability. Something to manage, mute, and polish into predictability. But once I started paying attention, something became obvious: my kids weren’t asking for a calmer, more controlled version of me. They were asking for more of the dad I actually am.

Being neurodivergent doesn’t just complicate fatherhood — it makes certain parts genuinely better. Not in the Instagram “ND superpower” way. In the real, everyday way where fun shows up because of how my brain works, not despite it.

Three traits in particular shape how my kids experience me.

My brain rejects routine by default. It doesn’t ask, “Should we?” It asks, “Why not?” And that simple shift creates the kind of moments other families have to schedule.

A walk in the woods because someone wondered what’s beyond the fence line. Ice skating on a random Tuesday because the pond froze. A bike ride that begins with no plan and ends wherever we decide to stop.

My kids don’t ask, “Can we go?” anymore. They ask, “Where are we going?”
They know the answer is usually yes, and it’s usually now.

The same wiring that makes me terrible at long-term timelines makes me excellent at seizing the five-second window where a memory is born.

I can’t fold laundry without turning it into something more interesting. My brain makes narratives whether I want it to or not.

Errands become missions. Grocery shopping becomes a hunt for something new.
Boring tasks become games we invent on the spot.

I’m not performing fun for them — I’m actually having fun.
That energy pulls kids in faster than any planned activity.

The gap between adult responsibility and childlike wonder feels small when your brain already lives somewhere in the middle.

When my kids ask a question, I don’t fire back a quick answer. My brain immediately wants to explore it with them.

We look up experiments. We follow tangents.
We notice details most people skip.

A question about melting ice becomes an experiment with salt and freezing points.
A question about a tree turns into counting rings and imagining the world when it was a seed.

The curiosity that exhausted my teachers is the same curiosity that keeps my kids engaged instead of tuning out.

Last month, I had to take trash to the dump — a chore I hate.
My 6- and 8-year-old were with me, and my brain refused to do it the normal way.

So we became spies.

One bad British accent later, we were on a covert mission to dispose of classified garbage. We whispered about enemy agents. We strategized our cover story. Every stranger became part of the narrative.

Unloading trash took ten minutes.
The memory took root instantly.

They still bring it up:
“Dad, remember when we were spies at the dump?”

Not because I worked hard to make a chore fun.
But because my brain went off-script, and they followed.

Stability matters. Regulation matters.
But kids also need fun, aliveness, adventure, unpredictability.

Most parents have to manufacture those moments with planning and effort.
My ND wiring creates them by default.

When I stop trying to mask the parts of myself I assumed were “too much,” fun happens on its own. The impulsivity, imagination, and curiosity I spent years wrestling with become the exact traits that make our home feel alive.

These aren’t add-ons to fatherhood.
They shape the experience for all of us.

My kids don’t need a toned-down version of me.
They benefit from the full version.

The truth is simple: the parts of me I spent years trying to tone down are the exact parts my kids hope I never grow out of.

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